1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a toner draining mechanism, a collected toner container, and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Background Art
Hitherto, in an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic type printer, a copying apparatus, a facsimile apparatus, or the like, a surface of a photosensitive drum is uniformly and evenly charged, the charged surface is exposed to thereby form an electrostatic latent image, and toner is deposited onto the electrostatic latent image to thereby form a toner image. After the toner image is transferred onto a sheet, it is fixed and an image is formed.
A small amount of toner remains on the surface of the photosensitive drum after the transfer of the toner image. Therefore, a cleaning blade is pressed onto the photosensitive drum and the residual toner is removed by the cleaning blade. A toner draining mechanism is arranged in a position adjacent to the cleaning blade. The toner draining mechanism has a cylindrical conveying path and is provided with a spiral (screw conveyer) for conveying the toner to the conveying path. Therefore, by rotating the spiral, the toner is conveyed and dropped into a drain toner vessel of a toner cartridge from a toner draining port formed in the lower surface of the conveying path, so that it can be collected (for example, refer to JP-A-2000-284660).
However, in the above conventional toner draining mechanism, since vibration or the like is applied to the conveying path when the drain toner vessel to drain the toner collected by the drain toner vessel is removed, the toner near the toner draining port drops into the image forming apparatus and dirties the inside of the image forming apparatus.